{ad} Reports are surfacing of extreme charges and other troubles hitting a number of iPhone users who take their phones overseas. Apparently, the iPhone sometimes won’t let you turn off data–amounting to HUGE data usage bills–and will randomly spit up error messages when you try to make a call or perform other call-related tasks.

In one case the individual called Cingular / AT&T before trekking to Europe to make sure that the iPhone’s SIM was activated appropriately. Then, to be sure, the individual called them from Europe. Both times Cingular confirmed that everything was working on their end.

Here’s a quick rundown of the problems encountered so far:

Phone calls: every time the individual attempts to make a call a message pops up warning that call forwarding is active. But, call forwarding is turned off! So, in order to make a call you have to quickly dismiss the call forwarding warning. (see pictures below).

Web surfing: No websites can be browsed from the iPhone while in Europe. When you try to browse you receive an “iPhone couldn’t contact the server” or something similar.

Web apps / Widgets – these only work occasionally.

Google Maps – They don’t work at all in Europe. The user could only see what was downloaded the last time the phone was working in the United States.

It’s too soon to tell if this is an isolated problem and / or an AT&T or Apple one but I’d be pretty upset if I had shelled out US$500 for my phone and then I wasn’t able to roam with it. As a person who used to travel internationally a lot, I can tell you that my trusted Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices never balked once, and they definitely jumped on more networks than I’m sure any QA person ever put them on.

Have you experienced any troubles with taking your iPhone overseas? Please comment below.

Reader Comments

SHRIKEE

Actually someone with an iPhone walked into our store earlier this month and some employees had a spin with it.

Google maps just works as it should and networking/internet obviously works too then. Perhaps your testcases/reports are wrong… You picture it like we europeans (im in the Netherlands) have some pre-mature mobile network or something while it’s just a matter of settings.

And as far as i know the iPhone only can do wifi and edge and we dont even have EDGE in the netherlands and yet it worked fine via GPRS we didn’t try Wifi… Nor widgets (afaik) but i heard no problems. :) the man (an american) could call people just fine and browsing with it was no problem either.

Just my say…

smcnern

I have add a problem as well. Called AT&T before I left for Europe to set up international calling and data plan. Since I had the phone for less than 3 months the representative refused to sign me up unless I could tell her the last two houses I had owned before my current home. I have lived in my current home for over 20 years. After much digging I found address that went back 25 years and she said she set up the international accounts. She was totally not customer service oriented and I replied to the customer service survey I received stating my experience.

During the final day of my trip I got a text message that my bill was getting high because of data usage. (I had been careful to use as little as possible) I got home and called AT&T (got helpful call representative this time) and found that the international accounts had not been set up and that my bill was $637 due to internet usage. (this was email data using the mail icon on the bottom of the iphone) (before I left I had stopped all emails other than just emergency emails from my work)

She can’t access the line-item usage for close to a week because the billing cycle ended last week. She will add the international coverage now and then review the bill after she can look at it. Then will make a adjustment request.

I don’t know where this will end up but working with AT&T has proven to be the problem that I expected it to be. I have avoided working with them since I have had customer service problems in the past.

I purchased this phone, in part, to take on my month long trip to Europe. At this point I would advise someone against doing this. Apple will really need to get involved in making sure that AT&T systems and charges work and are reasonable or people will look for alternatives to the iphone. Apple’s strong customer service reputation will be damaged as well.

I’m one of those loyal Apple customers having bought only Apple products for many years. Still have the original computer that came out after the LISA — not using but keeping it anyway.